Autofill is one of the most ordinary applications most of us ever use. Every browser has a function that can automatically populate web forms. So do most password managers and dozens of plug-ins and mobile apps. So what makes the developers of Fillr think autofill could be a massive market opportunity?

Simply stated, because most autofill apps don’t work very well. They do a pretty good job of handling basic name and address information, but can be thrown for a loop by oddball requests such as passport numbers or occupation. Add into that a mishmash of drop-down menus and formatting variances that different site owners employ, and the web form landscape is actually pretty chaotic.

Filling out forms and correcting errors manually is tedious on a desktop. On a mobile device it can be maddening. There’s a cost to that frustration. E-commerce merchants will lose $4.6 trillion to abandoned shopping carts in 2016, according to Business Insider Intelligence. “It’s easy to search for items on mobile, but entering all of the form fields at the checkout stage is still difficult,” wrote Evan Bakker, a BI Intelligence research analyst. That’s why his firm estimates that mobile phones made up 46 percent of global e-commerce traffic in the second quarter of 2016, but just 27 percent of purchases.

A better autofill

Fillr, which was developed by Melbourne, Australia-based Pop Tech Pty. Ltd., says it has a better way with what it calls “autofill as a service.” Its cloud engine uses contextual learning to read forms “as if they were being read by a human being,” said Karl Mattson, senior vice president of growth at of Fillr. The cloud engine employs more than 2,000 form-mapping expressions each time it reads an online form.

It also uses machine learning to compensate for irregular naming conventions or programming errors and to get smarter about spotting irregularities as it goes along. The cloud component is used strictly for form mapping. All personal information is saved in encrypted format on the users’ device. “We have no access to personal information,” Mattson said.

As a result, the company claims, it achieves 96 percent first-try accuracy in filling out forms on the web’s most popular websites. That compares with only a 53 percent success rate for browser-based utilities, according to Mattson.

The delta is particularly important on mobile devices. “Two-thirds of purchases now start on a mobile device but only 15 percent finish,” Mattson said. In contrast, the company says, Fillr users are 2.3 times more likely to complete an online transaction than those who rely on browsers or password managers.

Fillr hopes that will be music to the ears of e-retailers. Its plug-ins and apps are free; the paychecks are expected to come from licensing fees or commissions paid by online merchants. The company would also like to reduce its reliance on browser plug-ins by promoting a lightweight software development kit that e-retailers can use to embed Fillr functionality directly into their checkout forms.

Although Fillr apps and plugins have logged more than 100 million downloads, the company has a low profile in the U.S. market for its browser plug-ins and mobile app, but it only entered the U.S. market recently, setting up shop in San Francisco earlier this year. Founded in 2015, it has invested about $11 million in building and distributing its product so far, including a $5 million round last year.

However, that infusion should be enough to get it to break-even status, Mattson said. “We have a huge head start on anyone who might want to try to get into our market,” he said.

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